During the spring 2015 webinar we talked about why language immersion camps are a great way to get a program for young children started and how to use stories and story-based techniques and activities as a foundation for curriculum. We also showed a story as well as three related activities from a teaching unit for […]

During the spring 2015 webinar we talked about why language immersion camps are a great way to get a program for young children started and how to use stories and story-based techniques and activities as a foundation for curriculum. We also showed a story as well as three related activities from a teaching unit for preschoolers.

1) How many lessons are in a unit? Do you use a lesson a day?

Ana: The Teaching Unit included in each set has 12 lesson plans (e.g. the Teaching Unit in The Little Red Hen curriculum set has 12 lesson plans). All the sets have 12 lesson plans.

The lesson plans can be used in two ways:

Most people use one lesson per WEEK. This means that one Teaching Unit will help you cover three months of instruction (12 weeks = 3 months). This can be done through a longer class that meets once a week or with multiple shorter classes that meet throughout the week.

Other people choose to teach the lessons in intensive consecutive sessions. In that case, you could have an intensive8 to 12 day camp. This is ideal for holiday breaks or summer camps.

2) What is the appropriate time/duration for each class?

Ana: That depends on you. The 10 activities in each lesson plan are very rich. You can spend as little as 7 to 10 minutes on each activity or as long as you want, since they include many ideas that can be unfolded and expanded quite easily. You can also skip some activities if you are short on time. This means that you can use the lessons for short sessions or for full-day camps.

My goal when creating this curriculum was to offer a springboard to your own creativity and imagination. All the activities are called “samples.” You can use them like that, or you can modify them and take from them.

Having the solidly engineered structure of a house frees you to change the windows, the doors, etc., to your own taste. It’s the same idea with the lesson plans. You are free to create right away – or you can do this at your own pace.

3) How many classes per week?

Ana: You can create an intensive camp putting all the lesson plans in a Teaching Unit together, or alternatively expand the lessons throughout three months.

Regarding this latter option, it’s important to take into account that frequency of use is a factor. Therefore, from the point of view of learning, it is preferable to offer (let’s say) 20-minute classes three times a week, than a very intensive long session that only meets once a week. [Note: I don’t recommend classes shorter than 20 minutes.]

Ideally then, you would offer longer sessions more frequently, but that’s not always possible. However, you can be very successful with 1 hour once-a-week classes too! The secret here is to engage the parents. If the parents read the stories and play the games that you send home with their children, then the children will have the frequency and repetition that is ideal for language acquisition.

As a matter of fact, your once-a-week groups can do BETTER than the other groups as long as you get highly committed parents.

This is the reason that nothing beats parents in the language-learning department! Get a committed parent who uses the language at home with the child (i.e. reading stories together, playing, singing, etc.), and that child will learn by leaps and bounds. It doesn’t matter that the parent is a total beginner.

Kids who come to class once a week and have support at home learn much more than those who come more frequently but do not have that support. The difference is actually quite noticeable.

If only parents knew! I’ll take a parent as my co-educator any day.

4) How many kids should I have in the classes?

Ana: It will vary, but I would generally target somewhere between 8-16 kids in a class. You do not want to have too few students in your class because it may be difficult to keep it fun – children benefit from having the option to interact with various children in the classroom.

On the other hand, having too many students poses other challenges. For example, it will be difficult to dedicate time and attention to individual children.

The two extremes can lead to problems regarding classroom behavior, either because the class gets too boring with so few students or because it gets too crazy with too many.

There is a happy medium that will make your class more manageable and amenable for everyone, over time you decide what is that “just right” size for you.

Of course, if you are a teacher in a school, you don’t have the benefit of testing what size class will be optimal for you. In this case, I highly recommend that you request an aid for larger classes. Regular classes for young children typically have the teacher and one aid. That’s in place for a reason! You can request that the aid stays during your class. If that doesn’t work, you can see if parents would like to volunteer (but try not to assign them to their kid’s class because that will create another set of problems).

5) How do you divide the ages? How many sets do you have per age group?

Ana: I divide my curriculum in this way: Toddlers (ages 1 to 3), Preschoolers (3 to 5), Early Elementary (5 to 7), and Late Elementary (7 to 10).

There are four curriculum sets per age group. Each set has 12 lesson plans. Together, the four plans can help you cover nine months of instruction or you can create intensive camps as explained above.

6) When I finish the Red Hen, do you have other units?

Ana: After finishing The Little Red Hen, I have other sets for the preschool group available, including The Three Little Pigs, Thumbelina, and The Ugly Duckling. (There are four sets for each of the age groups.)

[A note about the first edition versus the second edition: We are in the process of updating our 12 story-based curriculum sets (i.e. all except for the “Toddler” sets, which are not based on stories). The Little Red Hen is our pilot set for the second edition.]

7) Do the sets include songs?

Ana: The sets include some references to songs, but they do not include the songs themselves. Most are typically available on iTunes or other online venues for about a dollar.

The main focus of the curriculum is on helping your students speak and have conversations. That being said, music is a fabulous way to enhance the curriculum, and this could be an area for you to bring your own creativity and interests.

8) Do you offer the stories as paperbacks? (We don’t use any tech with little children, just books and songs.)

Ana: The sets include the illustrations as well as the text of the stories in the target language as well as in English, so you can customize your own book or storyboard for use in your class. Of course, the online books are still available for parents at home for a nominal monthly subscription fee or as apps.

9) Are the stories in the present or past tense?

Ana: The stories are written in authentic language. That is, they mix the tenses and the modes and anything else like any story for native children would do. This is so because children learning a second language are perfectly able to acquire the entire ‘package’ of language and this is actually better for them.

What is different in my stories is the pace and the presentation. With native children, you can present more content at once and you don’t need to be as intent with things such as visual support, repetition, etc., because a lot of the vocabulary has already been acquired. However, even native children benefit from these techniques.

10) Can I be a Spanish language educator for young children (< 7yrs) if I have just a bit over high school understanding of Spanish? Would I be suitable to start a language school? How does one gain the confidence of parents, as one who isn’t fluent?

Ana: Let me tell you a story. I am from Spain and my teacher from pre-k to high school was British, we called her “la teacher.” In high school, however, our teacher was Spanish – but guess who was the better English teacher?

For as native as she was, I never learned any English from “la teacher” because she wasn’t consistent. She would jump around without any sense or method teaching this grammar rule this week and this old British song the next and, frankly, it was all so boring! Being the young child that I was, I just couldn’t concentrate (oh, but I still remember “My Bonnie Is Over the Ocean” pretty well – not that I ever understood the lyrics or that knowing this song helped me in any way!)

Things changed when we started high school. For all his thick accent and probably less than accurate performance, the Spanish teacher was a million times a better English teacher! He was more systematic and amenable. His approach was about speaking like British people, not just about learning grammar rules, old fashion songs, or cultural trivia. I began to actually enjoy my English class!

This is to say that you should not feel discouraged because you are not a native speaker. You can always improve your proficiency.

That being said, there are many ways to be an educator. It is true that having less proficiency than some of the parents will present a challenge. You can either present an argument like the one I just told you, or you can choose the other route to be an educator, and that is to not be in the classroom, but to hire others to do the teaching.

This latter route is actually going to allow you to grow faster if your intent is to have your own program. It will also equip you with some skills that you will never acquire if you are always in the classroom – and it is fun to be an entrepreneur!

11) If I purchase your curriculum, can I use the Ana Lomba logo and mention we are using your curriculum on our website?

Ana: This will be viewed on a case by case basis, and will require advance explicit approval by me. I am generally open to the idea of Mpressarias referencing the fact that they are using my curriculum. However, I need to understand the specific situation and see how my name is referenced. For example, if your program is solely based on my curriculum, this will more than likely be approved. However, if your program also uses other approaches that do not match my teaching philosophy, then approval is not likely.

12) Does your package also include a certificate of completion?

Ana: I do not provide certificates of completion. Some programs create their own certificates – kids and parents sometimes like this.

13) I have a problem in my class. I read stories to my students in English and then in Spanish and when I’m in Spanish my students don’t pay attention. What should I do?

Ana: I would really try to focus on the target language as much as possible. Therefore, minimize the English. Your students will not invest the effort in Spanish if they know they can just wait a few moments for the English.

]]>http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/your-spring-2015-webinar-questions/feed/117245 Tips for Starting a Language Immersion Camp (Anywhere and in Any Season)http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/5-tips-for-starting-a-language-immersion-camp-anywhere-and-in-any-season/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-tips-for-starting-a-language-immersion-camp-anywhere-and-in-any-season
http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/5-tips-for-starting-a-language-immersion-camp-anywhere-and-in-any-season/#commentsWed, 22 Apr 2015 19:39:24 +0000https://www.analomba.com/?p=15685 Tips for Starting a Language Immersion Camp (Anywhere and in Any Season)

With spring in the air in the Northern Hemisphere, and the school year winding down, many parents’ thoughts are turning to summer… and what to do with their children during the summer break! Summer enrichment programs or camps are becoming increasingly popular, with language camps at the top of that list. Many parents are actively […]

With spring in the air in the Northern Hemisphere, and the school year winding down, many parents’ thoughts are turning to summer… and what to do with their children during the summer break!

Summer enrichment programs or camps are becoming increasingly popular, with language camps at the top of that list. Many parents are actively looking for summer immersion programs to teach their little ones a new language.

If you have ever considered starting your own Spanish immersion program, French immersion program or any other language program, a language camp is the perfect way to start — and frankly, you can do it at any time, not just summer!

But you’ll want to make sure you avoid some common pitfalls, so that your Language camp will be fun and profitable…

Here are my top 5 tips for a successful Language Immersion Camp…

Tip #1: Ditch the flash cards.

Colors. Numbers. Days of the week.

It seems like the obvious place to start, right?

Time and again I see teachers start by teaching vocabulary. I get it! It’s an easy way to get started. But here’s the problem with that approach…

Drilling vocabulary is incredibly boring — for both students and teacher! And when you are in an instructional setting, young minds tend to wander, and you will quickly lose the attention of your students. Trust me, I see it happen all of the time.

And worse yet, teaching only vocabulary words won’t actually teach children Spanish — or any other language.

That’s because learning isolated vocabulary is NOT how humans learn language naturally!

(Think about it… You could memorize an entire Spanish dictionary and still not be able to carry on a conversation in Spanish.)

That is especially true for children. Children need to hear words spoken in context, so that they acquire the full “packet” of language — because language is not only words. It’s also phonology (how the language sounds), pragmatics (how the language is used, e.g. for greetings or other social purposes), syntax (the rules of how words go together, also known as “grammar”), etc.

When immersed in a language, the child’s brain immediately gets to task analyzing the ingredients in the “packet” and forming fresh neural pathways for this language. It all works very naturally, because the child’s brain is the best known device to learn language in the world. It is even better than any super-computer. In fact, when it comes to extracting complex rules from spoken language, a three-month-old will outperform an adult.

So if simple vocabulary doesn’t effectively teach a new language, where should you start teaching?

The answer is…

Tip #2: Get them talking — to each other!

Contrary to common belief, to really teach a child a new language, you need to get them to start speaking it as quickly as possible.

The more children start using the new language, the more quickly they will learn and retain it. Their developing brains will make those crucial neural pathways that will stay with them for life. In fact, research shows that the language we learn as children is stored in a different part of the brain as language we learn as an adult!

By the way, when I say “Get your students speaking the language,” I don’t mean just parroting back a few words and sentences to you, the instructor. I mean using everyday language to each other… in other words, real conversation!

But Ana, you may be thinking, how do I get children to start speaking a language they don’t know it yet?!

It may seem like a paradox, but believe me, it is possible. In fact, I can teach you how to get a child to start speaking a few simple phrases within just minutes of your first language camp session.

I will let you in on the secret… Pretend play!

You will be amazed at how quickly kids want to try out a new language when they are pretending — acting out their favorite scenarios or stories.

Let me explain why in my next tip…

Tip #3: Spark Their Imaginations

You may have noticed (perhaps with your own children) that starting around the age of three and a half, children LOVE to pretend and play the part — whether it’s being a fireman, a princess, a pirate, a witch, or whatever else strikes their fancy.

It’s also at this age that children make a spectacular leap in the sophistication of their language. This is not a coincidence!

When children engage in pretend play, they develop social and emotional skills. They also learn how to use symbolic communication (via movement, gestures, signs), e.g. “I am going to use a gesture to pretend that I am eating.” This is an important step in language acquisition and also in literacy development, which is based in complex symbolic communication.

By immersing themselves in imaginary situations, children are able to “try out” language suitable for that situation. That is how humans learn language naturally, by using it in different situations.

Furthermore, you could say that, through pretend play, children begin to discover that language has different functions and that mastering these functions is powerful — it allows them to advance to more sophisticated levels of play, and of life!

That’s why early childhood is the ideal age to use storytelling and pretend play to teach new languages! It’s an approach that goes a long way!

Tip #4: Use Familiar Stories

Another big mistake that new (and even experienced!) teachers make is to try to teach language using themes that are familiar to adults, but completely foreign to children.

Children don’t relate to scenarios such as buying tickets at the train station, or planning a trip. Yet these are the types of conversations that many language programs try to teach!

It’s also a mistake to force foreign culture on young children. Trying to teach your preschoolers or kindergarteners about holidays in Mexico or folk stories from France will be an uphill battle if they have little to do with that child’s previous experience. It’s just too much “foreign-ness” at a time when they are not ready for it (they will be, but not until they are older!).

Instead, start with something your students already know and love!

My curriculum uses popular stories and fairy-tales (such as Cinderella, The Three Little Pigs, and The Little Red Hen) to teach new languages to young children. It works because children love to hear familiar stories — ask any parent of a preschooler who requests the same bedtime story every night!

Also, because the child already knows the plot of the story, they already have a familiar context in which to understand new words in another language. Background knowledge is a best kept secret to advance quickly in a new language. Once you have a familiar background, it is very easy to insert cultural content that flows naturally with the context because we all share common human experiences.

Remember how I said you can get a child speaking in a new language within minutes of your first language immersion class? This is the key — acting out familiar stories. By combining the natural love that children have for pretend play and storytelling, you create the perfect situation for foreign language immersion!

Long before a child is ready to enjoy the experience of studying abroad, he will be thrilled to travel to the world of the imagination.

All it takes to transform his existing love for adventure into a great immersion experience in a “new land” (e.g. Wonderland, the Red Hen’s Farm, or Oz)… is to give him the language he needs to play the part!

Tip #5: Get Parents Involved

Parents are an important part of any language immersion program, but many times their role is completely overlooked.

In most cases, you won’t have a lot of time with your students — perhaps as little as a few hours a week.

But that doesn’t mean that your language camp won’t be successful. In fact, my curriculum is designed to be used in any increments of time. I’ve even had a teacher successfully use my lessons to teach Spanish to preschoolers in just 20 minutes a week!

The key is to get your lessons to travel home with the children. Use songs that students can sing at home and teach their families. Create activities that involve the parents.

My curriculum includes iPad apps that parents can download so they can read the same stories their child is learning in their immersion class. It also includes suggestions for fun activities to send home.

Get creative! Talk to parents to get their feedback.

Remember that parents are your greatest resource. Not only can they be your best collaborators in language learning, but also, they will be the ones to recommend your program to other parents! If you can make the parents of your students happy with how much their children are learning, they will be repeat customers, and your best source of word-of-mouth business.

Get everything you need to start a Language Immersion Camp!

Watch a replay of our webinar to learn how to get started and quickly make a profit teaching languages to children. I will show you how YOU can start in a very real yet manageable way – through a 2-3 week language camp – ideal for summer or any season.

It’s been hard to focus on work lately. In November, my family was informed that my dad had cancer and he only had a short time to live. I was devastated. He passed away in January. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to write about my dad, but I couldn’t. My dad […]

It’s been hard to focus on work lately. In November, my family was informed that my dad had cancer and he only had a short time to live. I was devastated.

He passed away in January.

My dad, Nicolás Lomba, and I going to a cousin’s baptism. To his friends he was “Nico,” to me, he was “papi.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to write about my dad, but I couldn’t. My dad was not an easy person, and we didn’t exactly have the best of relationships. I always wished it was different…

But there were also good moments. My dad opened the doors to who I am today. He could see how much I cared about learning English and how much I wanted to study abroad. He continued to fund my studies, even when money was scarce at home (he lost his job when I was a teenager and the economic situation in Spain was changing; we were six children).

Today, my dad continues to influence my work. Families, and in particular parent-child relations, are at the core of my curriculum and materials. I believe that parents are the most important influencers in their children’s education and well-being. The desire to have had a better relationship with my dad only makes me more conscious of that.

In my books, I create ideal situations in which parents and children talk, and learning takes place naturally. These “nurturing conversations” are the building blocks of many of my activities.

Research shows that those nurturing conversations between parents and children are among the most nutritious sources for language, cognition, and emotional IQ for young children. I didn’t know that when I started my work, but I am glad that I was on the right track.

La Pedriza, sierra de Madrid

On the plane ride home, flying over the beautiful mountains near Madrid, were my dad is now buried, I talked to him. I told him about my new work and how I am now writing curriculum in which children explore emotional and cognitive ideas simultaneously. I like that combination because it seems like we always leave the emotional side of education behind. I asked for his help.

I want to honor my dad in this way, with my best work. I know he’ll be there for me, just like he was there when as a teen I didn’t know what I would study, but I knew that my heart was “international.”

[Our team member, Doreen Hulsey, also lost her mom in December, and she wrote a beautiful letter about her. I invite you to read it here: Creating Nurturing Environments]

Right now, our team is preparing an upcoming webinar for people who want to start teaching languages. If you are interested, subscribe to Mpressarias to receive more information about it when we post it.

Guest blog by Doreen Hulsey, who owns her own business and is one of Ana Lomba’s team members. Hopefully, you had special people – parents, teachers – in your life who loved creating nurturing environments with wonderful memories. While I could mention a few teachers, my most special person was my mom, whom I very […]

]]>Creating Nurturing EnvironmentsMy daughter Nicole wearing the Sioux headdress that Mom and I made when I was in third grade. Mom dyed the turkey feathers and attached them. I did the beading. Little did I realize that Mom was creating nurturing environments through our projects.

Guest blog by Doreen Hulsey, who owns her own business and is one of Ana Lomba’s team members.

Hopefully, you had special people – parents, teachers – in your life who loved creating nurturing environments with wonderful memories. While I could mention a few teachers, my most special person was my mom, whom I very sadly lost on Dec. 31. She was my hero, my anchor as I grew up, and I learned a few principles below from her that can be applied no matter whether it’s your own children, other children, or even your own business.

When I was in third grade, my teacher asked the students in the class whom they admired most. While many of the children named a sports star, I said that was my mom and Leonardo da Vinci. Mom was my hero because she was a very honest, patient, supportive, loving, and giving person. (She also actually saved a couple of people from drowning.) She was also like Leonardo da Vinci, someone else I greatly admired. Both of them were good at so many things and could make something wonderful out of very little: a blank canvas, paint, blank paper, cardboard box, etc.

Creating Nurturing Environments for Children

Mom’s anchor was her father, who died several years before I was born. He had a saying that Mom lived by, which I heard so many times growing up.

“For every hour you give your kids, you get two hours of joy in return.”

It’s not the material things that matter most to children, it’s the amount of quality time we give them, no matter whether we are parents or teachers. Businesses and organizations, too, need quality time to run well.

Don’t sweat the small stuff, concentrate on what’s really important.

Not only did Mom spend a lot of quality time with my sister and me, but also she made some of our clothes and all of our Halloween costumes for many years. Additionally, she made many other things like a Native American tipi and a large cardboard house out of several empty refrigerator boxes she requested from an appliance store. She could take such simple, inexpensive materials and make the most wonderful creations. They were only limited by her imagination. She wanted us to have fun together.

Mom not only did these things for my sister and me, but also she spread it around to the schools and outside activities her children and grandchildren were in and beyond. She worked in the school libraries, taught our classes how to make mints, and gave historical presentations just a few years ago on the Pilgrims with props she made, including a little diorama. Additionally, she spent a lot of time teaching children to bowl and managing several children’s leagues in addition to the ones my sister and I bowled in.

Mom loved children, and it showed in so many things she did. Just like traditional teachers, Mom made a positive impact on many lives. I have some teacher friends and it’s amazing how many times out in public with my mom or friends that former students would come up to them and say, “Mrs. [last name]. Remember me? I’m [name] and was in your [class, league, etc.].” (I always thought that was so cool.)

Creating Nurturing Environments for Organizations & More

Mom had so many sayings that she lived by, but the next two apply to creating nurturing environments.

“Do the best you can at whatever you do, and do it right the first time.”

Mom at her desk in about 1997 Photo from Associated Press in “2 Aspirin And Go To Bed” article

Take pride in what you do and do the best you can. Although it’s not always easy to know how to do something right the first time, she was talking about not taking short cuts that would compromise the quality of whatever you do.

From a business standpoint, Mom took her love of stocks and worked hard at creating nurturing environments for two successful investment clubs she started, teaching her members how to invest. While she spent hours pouring over research, it paid off. She could frequently beat the markets over many years.

Associated Press Business Writer Vivian Marino learned of Mom’s success and wrote an article, “2 Aspirin And Go To Bed” in about 1997. The title of the article comes from Mom’s father’s saying, “Take two aspirin and go to bed.” He believed that when you hold good stocks, keep them when the market goes down… they’ll go back up.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

This was one of Mom’s favorite sayings. My mom, who was old enough to be my grandmother, was born in 1926, just seven years after women got the right to vote. She lived in a time when women mostly got nursing degrees or became teachers or secretaries. However, her father, who had marched for women’s suffrage, taught her that women could do anything a man could, like carpentry, architecture, and other non-traditional jobs. That would include owning your own business.

Mom wanted to get an architectural degree. However, that was not possible in the 1940s for her as a woman, so she got a degree in interior decorating and a minor in business. Not to be totally deterred, she took her love of architecture and designed, among other things, her own home and garden. She had the desire to do some type of project, so she found a way, even though the university previously denied her the traditional approach. It was really her love of designing things that drove her will.

Whatever you want to do in life, if you have the will – the love – to do it, then there is a way to achieve your goal. Mom lived her life this way. She resided by herself in the home she had designed right up until about a month and a half before she died. Getting around had become more difficult for her as well as getting out of chairs and going up and down the stairs.

Mom’s Japanese bridge and pond. Photo taken July 14, 2014

Almost 45 years ago, she created a beautiful Japanese garden, including a pond with koi and an authentic-looking Japanese bridge she built many years ago. She loved to spend a lot of time nurturing her lovely garden. Then, about 25 years ago, her garden was even featured in one of the national magazines and the local paper.

In the past few years until 2014, she would go out by herself and weed, plant flowers, and do other yard work while she slowly moved her chair around her beautiful garden for hours at a time. From the time my dad died, she hired people to mow the lawn, something she didn’t want to do. And she also hired people to cut the bushes, when she could no longer easily do it herself. Also, she transformed a walker into a tool holder, having someone weld hooks onto it to hold her trowel, little trimmers, and other small tools. Since she had the will – the love – to garden, she found a way to do it even with her growing physical limitations. Mom knew when and how to ask for help and wasn’t shy about it.

Love What You Do and Make It Show

Mom loved being with my sister and me, which really showed. She also put her effort into starting two very successful investment clubs, besides her garden. Her love and enthusiasm showed there, too. Mom was successful at most everything she tried because she not only had the determination to do it, but also she put her love into it. Additionally, she had the creativity to make something out of so little, which amazed not only me, but so many others.

Translating that to teaching foreign languages to children, once you know what you can and can’t do and what you do and don’t want to do, you can find the right tools or people to help you in creating nurturing environments no matter where you are. Keep in mind that time is money. Spend your time on what matters most: making it fun and creating great memories.

Right now, Ana and her team are preparing an upcoming webinar for people who want to start teaching languages. If you are interested, subscribe to Mpressarias to receive more information about it when we post it.

]]>http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/creating-nurturing-environments/feed/01247The Secret to Being a More Confident Teacherhttp://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/the-secret-to-being-a-more-confident-teacher/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-secret-to-being-a-more-confident-teacher
http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/the-secret-to-being-a-more-confident-teacher/#respondSat, 22 Nov 2014 18:29:00 +0000http://www.analomba.com/?p=1241The Secret to Being a More Confident Teacher

Everyone knows that gut-wrenching sensation, the butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling of first-day jitters. Now imagine that you are a first-time teacher, about to start your very first day of your very first language immersion class. You’ve got a group of small, expectant faces looking up at you. (And that’s if you are lucky to have the attention […]

Teaching is All About Confidence

When a teacher is confident, students can sense it. Perhaps without even realizing it, students pick up on that sense of calm control and are more receptive to what you have to say. Young children in particular crave a sense of order and authority to help them learn.

But it’s a bit of a paradox, isn’t it?

Confidence is usually gained gradually, from day after day of working with children and learning from experience.

How do you gain that confidence without any experience?

How can you project the same confidence of a veteran teacher on your very first day of teaching?

Here’s the Real Reason You May Lack Teaching Confidence…

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Those jitters don’t actually have anything to do with whether or not you think you’ll be a good teacher. And they don’t have anything to do with your credentials, either.

When I began teaching Spanish to children, I was a Ph.D. student from Princeton University with a background in Romance languages, and I had taught undergraduate students for a few years. I was also a native Spanish speaker from Madrid with two small children of my own. As far as I was concerned, I had all of the education and qualifications I needed to eventually become a great early language educator.

But I still didn’t have the first clue how to get started, and what to do after that, and after that.

What I really lacked was a big-picture game plan.

I was armed with plenty of activity ideas, but none of them were connected in any sensible and systematic way. I was feeling my way in the dark, and it would take me 15 years of research, trial and error, to finally create a unified method for teaching language to young children.

Let Your Curriculum Be Your Road Map

You don’t need to feel your way in the dark. You don’t need to spend hours of your own time scouring the Internet for new activity ideas and putting together lesson plans that may end up hit-or-miss.

My best advice to any new teacher is to start with a proven curriculum, and here’s why…

With the pressure to write curriculum lifted from your shoulders, you will be free to put your energy into conversing with your students. The best way to teach children to speak a new language is to fully engage them. Speak with them, make eye contact, use body language. We are programmed from birth to respond to these communication signals, and they reinforce what we are saying verbally.

If your curriculum is structured around a narrative theme, each lesson will build upon the one before it. Rather than jumping from one subject to the next, your students will learn new words in context to ones they have learned already. This is the way we naturally learn language, and when we learn this way we retain what we’ve learned. This means the more you teach, the easier it becomes for the student.

A well-planned curriculum gives you a script to follow, so that you can practice teaching before you start and visualize how your class is going to go. Like an actor, you can embody the role of a seasoned professional teacher. You can borrow confidence while you start on the path of earning confidence of your own. And before you realize it, you will become it.

Don’t Fake It ‘Til You Make It… Fake It Until You Become It

If you haven’t yet seen Amy Cuddy’s enormously popular Ted Talk, I highly recommend you do. A social psychologist from Harvard, Cuddy has been researching how our body language can actually change our thoughts and even change our behaviors.

The major discovery that Cuddy has made is that if you hold your body in a stance that projects confidence (what she calls a power stance) for at least two minutes, you can actually influence your body chemistry — particularly your hormones associated with confidence and stress. Your testosterone goes up, giving you confidence, while your cortisol, the stress hormone, goes down, making you feel more calm. Cuddy’s research has found that effective leadership in both males and females is linked to these hormones.

So by acting as if you are powerful and calm, you actually tell your body to become more powerful and calm.

The next time you are faced with a stressful situation, try it! Hold a power stance for two minutes, and see if you notice the change.

The part of Amy Cuddy’s Ted Talk I found most poignant was the last part about faking confidence. We’ve all heard the advice, “fake it ‘til you make it.” But what Cuddy is suggesting is more powerful than that. By projecting confidence and sending your body the signals that you are confident, you can actually “fake it until you become it.”

That’s what a good curriculum can do. With the right words and activities laid out for you, you can “walk the walk” of a professional teacher with 15 years experience, until it becomes second nature to you.

And if you are the owner or director of a language immersion program, you can give the teachers you hire this same gift of confidence. By providing them with a road map, you aren’t stifling their creativity — you are giving them a framework within which they can explore their own creativity!

Confidence will open the doors to more creativity and higher caliber teaching.

Does knowing what to do help you confront a new situation with confidence? I’d love to hear about your experiences – just post a comment below.

Are you looking for good Spanish immersion curriculum? I welcome you to try my First Day Spanish Lesson Plans. It’s the perfect way to try out my curriculum without having to purchase a whole curriculum set. And if you like it and want to keep going, you can get the whole set — you only need to pay the difference. Start out teaching like a pro!

]]>http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/the-secret-to-being-a-more-confident-teacher/feed/01241Why Is It So Difficult to Find Good Language Immersion Teaching Activities?http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/why-is-it-so-difficult-to-find-good-language-immersion-teaching-activities/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-is-it-so-difficult-to-find-good-language-immersion-teaching-activities
http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/why-is-it-so-difficult-to-find-good-language-immersion-teaching-activities/#respondSat, 25 Oct 2014 13:43:18 +0000http://www.analomba.com/?p=1223Why Is It So Difficult to Find Good Language Immersion Teaching Activities?

Last week I sent out a survey to my mailing list, to find out about their experiences teaching language to young children — such as what challenges they face finding activities, getting customers, and how my team can help support them in these challenges. We didn’t know what kind of response to expect, but we were gratified and happy […]

Last week I sent out a survey to my mailing list, to find out about their experiences teaching language to young children — such as what challenges they face finding activities, getting customers, and how my team can help support them in these challenges.

We didn’t know what kind of response to expect, but we were gratified and happy to see so many replies!

Some of the responses were especially eye-opening. Most everyone agreed that the biggest challenge is finding good activities that matched their needs, despite the wide range of free materials available on the internet.

Many people said that searching for resources is incredibly time consuming.

That sparked an interesting conversation with my team, because we could relate to these experiences — we had the same challenges when we started!

If you haven’t met my team yet, they are mom-entrepreneurs as well. Doreen is a business owner, former homeschooler, scientist, and software engineer with two college-age daughters. (You can read about her experiences here.) Sarah is a web designer and marketing consultant with a preschooler and 2nd grader. We all share a passion for languages and teaching, so we had a lot to say about this topic.

You can see our lively conversation below. We talk about…

Some of our biggest teaching mistakes when starting out, and why YOU may be repeating them

How free materials may cost you more in the long run

How to avoid spending thousands of dollars like we did

So, what do you think? What is YOUR teaching philosophy? Leave your comments below.

I’ve had the honor of knowing Ana Lomba for more than a year, and she asked me to tell you about my experience with foreign language teaching in the home, classroom & homeschool and my biggest challenge. After I had two children and stayed home, I never imagined myself teaching children in a classroom setting […]

I’ve had the honor of knowing Ana Lomba for more than a year, and she asked me to tell you about my experience with foreign language teaching in the home, classroom & homeschool and my biggest challenge.

After I had two children and stayed home, I never imagined myself teaching children in a classroom setting or in a homeschooling setting, but I’ve done both. My struggle with finding great curriculum (my biggest challenge), though, began several years before this when I wanted to teach Spanish to my children at home.

The Ease and Difficulty of Finding Curriculum

Perhaps you can relate to some of my difficulties. On one hand there was an overwhelming number of sites out there where I could get free curriculum, but on the other there were so few places to get great items to help minimize the time to create lessons and to help me understand the best ways to teach them. More than 20 years ago, I considered many options, spending numerous hours evaluating them.

I really wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I knew I didn’t want to take the very time-consuming route of drawing on disjointed items from various places. (Time, as the saying goes, is money.) There was another reason why we didn’t take this path, but at the time I couldn’t articulate it. My reasons eliminated the free items, leaving us few choices: Rosetta Stone and Muzzy.

Evaluating Rosetta Stone

First, my children and I looked at Rosetta Stone, so we downloaded the free demo of Spanish. The price tag concerned me, so I wanted to be sure my children liked the program. Almost immediately, my kids and I had our answer. The first few exercises of the program showed us images of a man, woman, boy, and girl with the Spanish words above the respective images. The program spoke the Spanish words for each, and my children had to match similar images without labels using the Spanish words. The software later progressed to simple sentences, using the learned vocabulary.

My children hated Rosetta Stone because it was like using fancy flashcards. It was boring and not how they wanted to learn. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t like it either. Not only was it important to me for my children to love learning to create lifelong learners, but also I knew that this was not the best way for children to be learning a language.

I had done plenty of research on how children learned best. Because of this, the principal in a nearby school district asked me to be Research Chair of the school’s improvement committee where the school and district implemented some new ways of teaching based on my research. Natural language acquisition – teaching in context – was what I wanted when it came to teaching foreign languages. Additionally, based on the research I wanted the children to use movement and as many senses as possible to create multiple pathways in the their brains, which helped make learning easier, faster, and more permanent.

Evaluating Muzzy

Next, we looked at Muzzy, a product from BBC. If you are not familiar with Muzzy, he’s an animated character among several in a fairytale-style cartoon. Muzzy had the context I was looking for: a fun story. Back then, Muzzy was on VCR tapes with no supplemental products. There were only Levels I and II. Even though it also was expensive, I bought it. My children enjoyed it and played it over and over, learning the Spanish in context. Also, they didn’t get bogged down learning boring grammar rules at this early stage.

The problems, though, were the lack of additional levels and supplemental products to reinforce the story in others ways. While we loved Muzzy, it was not sufficient in the end. However, as a newbie teacher, I was only starting to evolve my teaching philosophy and understanding what I really wanted and needed.

Teaching in a Multi-aged/Multi-ability Classroom

It’s about finding the right materials and strategies

But in the meantime, my older daughter’s teacher asked me to teach Spanish to her class. The only thing I had was Muzzy. As a newbie teacher, I was now in the situation of preparing daily lesson plans with little help from the Muzzy program, itself. While it did come with a thin, little book of questions, that was all I had to work with. If you’ve ever prepared your own lesson plans, you know how time consuming this is. Also, I could have used some help on understanding what to do, especially on that first day – all those young, expectant faces counting on me to make this enjoyable. I felt a great sense of responsibility to capture the children’s natural curiosity to help make them lifelong learners.

If you’ve ever taught in a multi-aged and/or multi-ability classroom, you know the challenges of trying to meet the needs of all the students. That posed it’s own issues.

The children did enjoy Muzzy and learned some Spanish. However, once we went through the tapes and did the activities I prepared, that was all I had for them. I couldn’t afford the time to come up with more material because by this time I had started homeschooling my younger daughter after a horrible kindergarten year. I took my first grader to my older daughter’s multi-aged classroom (grades 2 to 4), so I could teach them Spanish and science, in addition to helping with math and coaching the kids in the classroom on how to do science projects.

Homeschooling

In March, all that came to an end when I brought my older daughter home to homeschool her too. The only subjects she remembered from her brief time in the 3rd grade at school were the ones I taught because I tried to reach each student’s ability level. Unfortunately, the teacher for the class was trying to keep all the students together on the other lessons, which meant my daughter and the children from her class the year before were now doing the same material and tests over again. It’s a long story, but my daughter shut down and wouldn’t take the teacher’s tests again or turn in her homework. I couldn’t blame her.

All of a sudden, I now had two children to school at home and 2 months to finish the normal school year. I had no idea what levels to buy because my children were very precocious and way ahead of the normal classroom. I made plenty of mistakes and bought boring textbooks to start out with, feeling a need for more structure with 2 children. Having wasted that money and time spent with those, I tossed them out after 3 weeks and used, for a short time, the unschooling method (letting the children decide what they wanted to learn and how) for all the subjects, except for Spanish.

We joined 2 homeschooling groups, and I taught Spanish to kids using Muzzy again and also bought workbooks that were disjoint. It wasn’t ideal, and I wasn’t happy because it was not how I wanted to teach or the children wanted to learn.

Developing My Teaching Philosophy

To help make learning fun and easier, use movement and as many senses as possible

During the summer, I had an important revelation, as I once again searched for curriculum. It was at this time that I realized I had a teaching philosophy. Life happens in context of everything else, and so does learning. Holistic learning, which is what I mentioned earlier that I couldn’t articulate at the time, was what I needed to focus on, so I needed to find curricula that met this.

For example, when teaching history, I would tie in the literature portion to it. If possible, I tied in other subjects, too, like math and science. For Spanish, I would use a story and work in plenty of playtime. Instead of teaching colors, paint with them, as Ana Lomba says. In another activity, using some food props, I would play the customer while the children were waiters/waitresses. Not only did they learn about food, but also we exchanged money, which allowed them to learn numbers.

Now after 10 years of teaching, I’ve evolved my teaching strategies and know what I was really looking for all those years ago when I first started with Spanish. I’m sure many of you can relate. I wanted a framework that would give the children cohesive, holistic learning – not isolated ideas. To accomplish this, I wanted plenty of bilingual stories with lesson plans, music, activities, teaching advice, and other resources. Also, I wanted kids to be able to practice with items at home, too. Finding some free items wouldn’t be bad as long as I had the framework to make them fit into the “storyline” that I wanted to weave for the children. While I never did find Spanish curricula to meet my needs all those years ago, Ana has some great products that fit my teaching philosophy and needs for a framework. It was only recently that I realized she has over 40 products, including some new ones, although most are not online yet.

While you pay a bit more for some of her products, they are well worth it in time savings and give much-needed advice that many of us want. When I was teaching, I asked the school and homeschooling parents to chip in for the resources. In another situation, we ran a fundraiser selling cookie dough to support a program.

What are you looking for in regards to curriculum?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Let me know what you are looking for by leaving a comment below.

Ana’s Exciting New Products & Website

Ana will be launching her newly redesigned website very shortly, which has links to many of her products, including her new ones. While not all the products are online yet, it will give you an idea of what she has in Spanish, French, and Chinese. Be sure to check out the free bilingual Little Red Hen storybook app, which demonstrates the high quality of her products. Watch this video to meet Ana and get more details on where to get her apps.

Are you a parent or teacher who is looking for tips, advice, products, and other information to teach children a foreign language? Consider subscribing to her Parents & Teachers List and you’ll also get updates about the products.

Ana’s got some new products and courses coming out soon, and I’m really excited about those. Also, since she’s heard from so many people who want advice on starting a business teaching foreign languages to kids, she’s creating some new services.

If you are interested in starting or running a foreign language teaching business for children, you may want to join her Mpressarias list to get advice, tips, and other information. (Mpressaria stands for Mom/Empress/Entrepreneur!)

Doreen Hulsey is a scientist, software engineer, former homeschooler, and business owner who is very passionate about education and foreign languages. She’s written numerous papers on education. Now an empty-nester, she lives at home with her husband and develops software and websites. Along with a colleague, Doreen is working with Ana to develop her new website.

]]>http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/foreign-language-teaching-home-classroom-homeschool/feed/21211People Thought I Was Crazy to Open a Preschool Language Immersion Program… But Now Everyone Wants to Start Their Own!http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/people-thought-i-was-crazy-to-open-a-preschool-language-immersion-program-but-now/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=people-thought-i-was-crazy-to-open-a-preschool-language-immersion-program-but-now
http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/people-thought-i-was-crazy-to-open-a-preschool-language-immersion-program-but-now/#commentsSat, 11 Oct 2014 13:30:53 +0000http://www.analomba.com/?p=1198People Thought I Was Crazy to Open a Preschool Language Immersion Program… But Now Everyone Wants to Start Their Own!

This month of October marks my 15th anniversary as a language entrepreneur. Back when I started, everybody thought I was crazy to put my Princeton University Ph.D. degree on hold to start a program to teach Spanish to young children. Fifteen years ago, nobody in the U.S. cared about young children learning foreign languages. In […]

This month of October marks my 15th anniversary as a language entrepreneur. Back when I started, everybody thought I was crazy to put my Princeton University Ph.D. degree on hold to start a program to teach Spanish to young children.

Fifteen years ago, nobody in the U.S. cared about young children learning foreign languages.

In fact, many people thought that it was a BAD idea to teach young children a foreign language.

Believe It or Not, Early Language Education
Was Once the Villain of the Story

Doctors used to warn against teaching a second language to young children!

The common belief was that children would confuse the two languages. They would start speaking later, develop stuttering, dyslexia… any learning or developmental issue that the child would present would be immediately blamed on the additional language.

And even if the new language didn’t create the problem, it would definitely accentuate it.

This is your bilingual brain… 15 years ago vs. today.

Bilingual parents had the most to lose with these myths. I remember a couple from Argentina, who were advised by their doctor not to teach their twins Spanish because they had been born prematurely. The parents had come to regret their decision and enrolled their now two-year-old toddlers in one of my classes. (They learned both Spanish and English perfectly fine, by the way.)

So common were these cases in my classes that I decided to dig deeper and ask attendees in my workshops and conferences, “How many of you have received the recommendation not to speak your home language/another language to your kids?” Lots of hands went up.

In those times, you had to do a double job, teaching a language and educating the parents about the safety of learning languages.

As a result, we in the early foreign languages arena were the Cinderellas of education, always waiting for the Fairy Godmother, who would magically enlighten everyone once and forever.

Luckily for us, Science is now our Fairy Godmother.

Science Comes to the Rescue

The truth is that the science was there for a long time, but now scientists can look directly at the brain and see exactly what goes on when children (or adults) learn languages.

So what do scientists see?

Learning a new language not only doesn’t fry your child’s brain, but it is actually one of the best exercises for any brain.

Also, learning a new language is particularly excellent for young children, because the young brain is ideally suited to learning language.

Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Brain and Learning Sciences at the University of Washington, studies how we learn language as babies, looking at the ways our brains form around language acquisition. In this TED Talk, she shares her astonishing findings about how babies learn language.

Scientists and educators have observed that learning a new language gives your child a whole range of advantages, including:

And since nobody believed in teaching languages in the preschool and elementary school years, nobody invested in independent programs either.

As a consequence, the few independent early immersion programs that do exist today are full. Their wait lists are long.

This Has Created a NEW Opportunity…

The great news is, this scarcity presents an opportunity for new entrepreneurs who want to teach languages to young children.

We now have a ready audience clamoring for our services, with very little competition!

As an expert in this field, I have never seen a niche with such exciting potential.

If you are ready to make that step and open your own immersion program, there is no better time to start than now.

But here is the thing…

Teaching languages to young children requires sophisticated knowledge and technique that you can’t acquire in a few days. (Psst: Showing flashcards won’t do it. That’s not teaching a language. That’s just teaching a bunch of words.)

And that’s just the beginning. Creating a successful business doing it is a challenge in itself.

This is precisely what I have been helping people do during the last few years…

I have been helping passionate mom-entrepreneurs start their own language immersion programs.

I Want to Help You Get Started in This Niche!

A few years after I opened my language program, I had to close it for personal reasons. With the birth of my youngest daughter Marina, a special child with many medical needs, I switched the focus of my business to helping other entrepreneurs pursue their dreams while I took care of my daughter at home.

What I learned in my years running my program, and even being an educated, bilingual mom, was that it takes a lot more than command of the language to be able to teach it to young children.

And that’s where many programs make a crucial mistake. Their only requirement for teachers is that they speak the language. But those people have never been taught how to teach languages!

In fact, it’s incredibly difficult to find any training in how to teach languages to young children. It’s hard to find practical instruction — whether from university courses or books — that specialize in this field.

And that’s what makes my curriculum and training unique.

Introducing the Ana Lomba Mpressarias®
Curriculum and Training

If you are interested in starting a new program, I am very close to launching my new curriculum, which contains everything you need to start teaching.

It’s both a teaching guide and a series of lesson plans and activities. It will not only help you get started teaching, but facilitate the growth of your program.

We will also offer our new Language Entrepreneur Lab e-training course for aspiring language entrepreneurs starting in January 2015.

Ana Lomba is changing the way people think about and interact with young children learning languages. Her Parents’ Choice award-winning books, teaching guides, lively songs, games, stories, and mobile applications are quickly becoming favorites with teachers and parents who want to nurture young children’ inborn language abilities. Key to the success of Ana’s break-through method is a focus on the family as the ideal environment for early language learning – even her signature curriculum for language programs is built with parents in mind. Ana has taught toddler, preschool, elementary school, and college-level Spanish courses, and held leadership positions with some of the most influential language organizations in the US, including ACTFL, NNELL and FLENJ. After graduating with a law degree from Spain, her native country, Ana pursued graduate studies at Binghamton University, Princeton University, and NYU. She lives with her husband and three children in Princeton Jct., NJ.

One of the most exciting areas of brain research today deals with the effects of bilingualism on cognition. Studies have shown that speaking two or more languages produces a kind of intelligence that goes beyond language. In fact, speaking two languages fluently transforms the most important operations of the brain in quite ingenious ways. The […]

One of the most exciting areas of brain research today deals with the effects of bilingualism on cognition.

Studies have shown that speaking two or more languages produces a kind of intelligence that goes beyond language.

In fact, speaking two languages fluently transforms the most important operations of the brain in quite ingenious ways. The result is a sharper and more flexible brain.

Here are two must-see videos by Drs. Ellen Bialystok and Patricia Kuhl on bilingualism and the brain. After watching them, scroll down this page to go back to our original question: How can we nurture the inborn bilingual genius of babies and toddlers?

Patricia Kuhl video: The Bilingual Genius of Babies

Ellen Bialystok video (Move the cursor to minute 16 to see her presentation):

As explained in Bialystok’s video, the bilingual intelligence that researchers find so fascinating is linked to fluency, not to memorizing a few colors or learning some songs – although these are important activities to do along the way. The further you move along the fluency continuum, the bigger the benefits, both in terms of fueling the bilingual “genius” and in terms of opportunities (speaking two languages fluently is a great skill to put on your resume!).

No doubt that’s great news if you are a bilingual parent and can speak to your child in two languages…

BUT, how can monolingual parents seize the bilingual genius of babies?

Here are two of my projects geared to help parents speak another language fluently with their children. The first one, Bilingual Smart, coauthored with Karen Nemeth, is a series of Kindle books with audio for parents and toddlers. The second, The Language Mamapreneur, will be a website with resources and ideas for prospective or experienced language program owners.

Babies and toddlers’ language flourishes with “Parent talk.” Young children learn languages best through one-on-one interaction with real people. For as much as we love technology, that’s not the way the baby’s brain is set to learn language (but technology can be used interactively with an adult with great results).

Talking to a child is not only key for language development: research has shown that, for young children, “parent talk” is highly correlated with a child’s future success in school and in life. Parent talk is also called “mother talk” and “motherese,” since mothers tend to spend more time with their infants.

Babies and toddlers acquire language by living it. So forget about sitting down and explaining a lesson! Just do things and talk about them.

Babies and toddlers need everyday language reinforcement. Therefore, it is better to talk with them about important things in their life.

Co-author Karen Nemeth and I have developed interaction models in the form of 15-minute “Bilingual Smart Games” that parents can use to turn everyday activities into bilingual opportunities and powerful brain-builders. Counting Cheerios over breakfast, matching the top and bottom of pajamas and discussing the weather, all present opportunities to help your child learn a different language and grow cognitively.

While we are starting with Kindle books, we may produce the games in other formats – your input is highly valued in this respect (please add a comment at the end of this blog if you want).

MPRESSARIAS® CURRICULUM

My second project has to do with my lesson plans and resources for those of you who want to start your own language programs teaching young children. The sixteen bilingual curriculum sets to teach children ages 1 to 10 in several languages will be available soon. The Little Red Hen is available now in Spanish/English & French/English.

And here is a question for you: how do you say “Bilingual Genius” in your language?

I decided to go with “Ingenio Bilingüe” in Spanish (as opposed to “Genio Bilingüe”) because “genio” also means “bad tempered” in Spanish – not that babies can’t show some temper!

****

Ana Lomba is changing the way people think about and interact with young children learning languages. Her Parents’ Choice award-winning books, teaching guides, lively songs, games, stories, and mobile applications are quickly becoming favorites with teachers and parents who want to nurture young children’ inborn language abilities. Key to the success of Ana’s break-through method is a focus on the family as the ideal environment for early language learning – even her signature curriculum for language programs is built with parents in mind. Ana has taught toddler, preschool, elementary school, and college-level Spanish courses, and held leadership positions with some of the most influential language organizations in the US, including ACTFL, NNELL and FLENJ. After graduating with a law degree from Spain, her native country, Ana pursued graduate studies at Binghamton University, Princeton University, and NYU. She lives with her husband and three children in Princeton Jct., NJ.

Keep in contact!

Sign in to my list to receive information about teaching and raising young children in another language. The sign in box is on the right sidebar.

]]>http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/how-to-nurture-the-bilingual-genius-of-babies-como-cultivar-el-ingenio-bilingue-de-los-bebes/feed/51066To Test or Not to Test – That Is the Questionhttp://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/to-test-or-not-to-test-that-is-the-question/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=to-test-or-not-to-test-that-is-the-question
http://www.analomba.com/anas-blog/to-test-or-not-to-test-that-is-the-question/#commentsTue, 04 Sep 2012 00:56:41 +0000http://www.analomba.com/?p=1032To Test or Not to Test – That Is the Question

Do you have an independent language program for kids? Then, you may be interested in these two question, posted by a “mamapreneur” that attended a recent webinar focused on curriculum for enrichment Spanish immersion programs Q1: “What about assessment? How can we evaluate that our students are learning?” Here is my […]

Q1: “What about assessment? How can we evaluate that our students are learning?”

Here is my response:

This is a very complex question to answer here, but I think that in our particular situation it makes much more sense to talk about providing ongoing, formative “feedback” of the type that will help our students become independent and self-motivated learners.

What do I mean by our “particular situation”?

While a student in a regular school will normally stay there for the entire year (and then several years in a row), independent language programs typically see new students every single session.

So on any given session, there will be a combination of new and returning students. Also, the sessions tend to be short (about 8 -12 weeks) and students attend once a week for ½ hour or 1 hour.

There’s also the fact that some of your students will probably miss one or more classes when there’s a soccer game, a birthday party, etc, etc.

Instead of wasting a lot of time thinking about creating tests (which, rightly or wrongly, is the first thing that comes to mind when teachers hear the word “assessment”) I would suggest that teachers in independent programs become pros at providing excellent feedback to their students.

It doesn’t need to be a formal thing (e.g. elaborated tests) – excellent feedback on an informal basis does the trick too.

The September 2012 issue of Educational Leadership, a journal by ASCD is dedicated in its entirety to the topic of feedback, and I HIGHLY recommend it to you: “Feedback for Learning.” [Volume 70, Number 1]. The articles in this issue will put you on the path to providing great feedback to your students.

Q2: Also, what do I do if I have different level students in one class. In other words, can the unit of the Three Little Pigs be adapted to students of different levels?

You don’t need to adapt the unit, but to match the tasks to the student.

The ultimate goal of my units is to build fluency. Some of your students will be further along the fluency continuum than others, and it is important that each one works at their own level.

For example, while a beginner may be memorizing a few character lines, a heritage speaker can use the lines proposed by you and improvise many others on his or her own.

Actor buying straw at the Home Depot

Therefore, in an activity in which they pretend to be the seller, the task for heritage and advanced students could be to convince prospective buyers (i.e. the three little pigs) to buy a product for their houses, while your beginners could just have to sell a few items using two or three sentences that you give them.

Another example:

A beginner student will need to go back and forth between the Spanish and the English while using the e-storybook at home (otherwise, he will not understand what the book says).

However, a heritage or more advanced student may be able to stick to the Spanish and read along with the sound, or on her own without the sound.

You can ask the first student to keep track of a few words or expressions he learns each day. The second student can keep track of how many pages she can read on her own. They can both show off their skills in class.

Let me know what is on YOUR mind in terms of assessment and differentiation for enrichment language programs – just write a comment below this post, and thanks for reading!

All the best,

****

Ana Lomba is changing the way people think about and interact with young children learning languages. Her Parents’ Choice award-winning books, teaching guides, lively songs, games, stories, and mobile applications are quickly becoming favorites with teachers and parents who want to nurture young children’ inborn language abilities. Key to the success of Ana’s break-through method is a focus on the family as the ideal environment for early language learning – even her signature curriculum for language programs is built with parents in mind. Ana has taught toddler, preschool, elementary school, and college-level Spanish courses, and held leadership positions with some of the most influential language organizations in the US, including ACTFL, NNELL and FLENJ. After graduating with a law degree from Spain, her native country, Ana pursued graduate studies at Binghamton University, Princeton University, and NYU. She lives with her husband and three children in Princeton Jct., NJ.